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GLADSTONE-PARNELL
AND
THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE.
A GRAPHIC STORY OF THE INJUSTICE AND OPPRESSION INFLICTED UPON IRISH TENANTRY, AND A HISTORY OF THE GIGANTIC MOVEMENT THROUGHOUT IRELAND, AMERICA AND GREAT BRITAIN FOR "HOME RULE," ALSO A COMPLETE HIS- TORY OF THE GREAT TIMES CONSPIRACY, WITH BIOG- RAPHIES OF THE GREAT LEADERS, GLADSTONE, PAR- NELL, DAVITT, EGAN, AND VERY MANY OTHERS
BY THB DISTINGUISHED AUTHORS, JOURNALISTS AND FRIENDS OF IRELAND,
Hon. THOMAS POWER O'CONNOR. M. P.,
AND
ROBERT McWADE, Esq.,
Ex- President Municipal Council of Philadelphia, etc, etc.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
BV
HON. CHARLES STEWART PARNELL, M.P.
Canadian Introduction hy A. Burns, D. D., LL.D. American Introduction by Prof. R. E. Thompson, D. D., LL.D.
PROFUSELY ILLUSTRATED.
HUBBARD BROTHERS,
PHILADELPHIA, PA., U. S. A.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1890, by
HUBBARD BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.
Printed, Bound and Manufactured in the U. S.
INTRODUCTION.
I HAVE pleasure in writing a few lines of preface to Mr. T. P. O'Connor's volume. I know no one who is better fitted to present the case of Ireland, and especially the history of our movement, before the public of Arrterica. His vigorous and picturesque pen makes everything he writes lucid, interesting, and effective ; and he has had the advantage of himself taking a promi- nent and honorable part in many of the scenes he so graphically describes. I believe it espe- cially desirable to have our case properly stated to the American public at the present moment. No Irishman can speak too warmly of the ex- traordinary assistance that America has rendered to the cause of Ireland. The financial and moral support which our movement has received from the Great Republic has been recognized by eminent English Statesmen as an entirely new factor in the present movement, and as giving it
g INTRODUCTION.
a Strength and a power of endurance absent from many previous Irish efforts. It is at mo- ments of crisis Hke the present, when other po- litical parties face the expense and difficulties of a political campaign with hesitation and appre- hension, that one really appreciates the enormous position of vantage in which American generosity has placed the Irish party. Then the unanimity of opinion both among the statesmen and the journalists of America has done much to en- courage men like Mr. Gladstone, who are fight- ing for the Irish cause, and to fill Ireland's enemies with the grave misgiving that the policy con- (lemned by another great and free nation may not be sound or just. For these reasons we are all especially desirous that American opinion should be made acquainted with the merits and facts of this great controversy, and the following pages are eminently calculated to perform that good work.
Charles Stewart Parnell.
HON. T. P O'CONNOR, M. P.
A BURNS, D U , LL D
CANADIAN INTRODUCTION.
BY A. BUEKS, D.D., LL.D.,
President Wesleyan Female College, Hamilton, Ont., Canada.
THE following pages cover one of the most interesting periods in Irish history. The story related falls mainly within the memory of most of its readers, embracing scarce the last two decades.
It is written by a university man of scholarly attainments, a brilliant journalist and author, one who, although comparatively a young man yet, is fairly entitled to say of most of the strug- gles and scenes he describes, quorwn pars magna fui.
The book may be taken as a representative putting of the great struggle now going on, and as such it may fairly claim the attention of all in- terested in the peace and prosperity of Ireland. None need be told that that land is now unhappy and somewhat disaffected.. Her harp is on the willows, her songs are threnodies. Yet no one can become acquainted with her children without
9
10 CANADIAN INTRODUCTION.
discovering that naturally they are cheerful, light- hearted and hopeful. Nor can you give to one of them a cup of cold water without waking a genuine inborn gratitude. Whether at home or abroad, the race is "lopeful, grateful, and essen- tially patriotic. A kind word ^r deed for Ireland will brighten the eye, quicken the pulse, arouse the enthusiasm, and win the affection of her chil- dren the world over.
Have her critics furnished an adequate expla- nation of the present unhappy condition of such a people? The passionate outbursts of her out- raged sons receive due prominence. Her agra- rian crimes are published far and wide, Bu,'. few zre candid enough to admit that the crimes of Ire- land are chiefly agrarian, and caus"ed by the wholesale confiscation of her soil, and the strug- gles of the descendants of the real owners to re- gain the lands of their fathers. Goldwin Smith tells us "an alien and absentee proprietary is the immediate source of her troubles." " The owner- ship of land in that country is itself the heritage of confiscation, and of confiscation which has never been forgotten. The struggle is in fact the last stage of a long civil war between the con- quered race and an intrusive proprietary, which was closely identified with the political ascendency of the foreigner, and the religious ascendency of an alien creed." *' The districts where agrarian violence has most prevailed have been singularly
CANADIAN INTRODUCTION. H
free from ordinary crime. The Irish farmer has clung desperately to his homestead, eviction is to him destitution." "The crime (of the Irish) is solely agrarian. In the districts where it has been most rife, even in Tipperary itself, ordinary offences have been very rare," and he continues, "justice requires that we remember the training which the Irish as a nation have had, and of which the traces are still left upon their character. In 1798 they were goaded into open rebellion by the wholesale flogging, half-hanging, pitch-capping and picketing which were carried on over a large district by the yeomanry and militiamen, who, as soon as the suffering masses began to heave with disaffection, were launched upon the homes of the peasantry."
Irish history is little studied. Few even of my countrymen know anything of the history of our country. A partial excuse may be found in the fact that even in the schools of Ireland the history of the country is not found. Only as it may be considered necessary to explain English history is Ireland ever mentioned, and neither in common school nor in university have the children of Ire- land the faintest opportunity to learn anything of their people, or the causes of the disaffection so generally prevalent. Traditions abound, but they are generally on sectarian lines, and theological bitterness, the worst of all, is usually added to political.
12 CANADIAN INTRODUCTION.
The story that follows will be found real his- tory, the history of our own times. Every page will revive the memory of the stirring scenes of the last decade or two, and as a panoramic vision will fix in the mind the cause of events that had well-nigh passed from us forever.
This work will be found exceedingly oppor- tune. Mr. Gladstone's bill for Home Rule in Ireland has been defeated at Westminster, and again by the people of England, because, as we verily believe, it was not understood by the Brit- ish people, while it was grossly misrepresented by those whose interests are at war with the enlargement of popular rights.
The following pages will show the emptiness and absurdity of the war cries of the late conflict — "The Empire in Danger," "The Union in Dan- ger," "Protestantism in Danger"-— all echoes of the Disestablishment Conflict of 1868, the recol- lections of which ought to have taught the pseudo- prophets wisdom and moderation. There never was a measure more grossly caricatured than the late bill for the relief of Ireland. It was all in vain that the leaders of Irish thought had declared both with pen and voice that " the proposed Irish Parliament would bear the same relation to the Parliament at Westminster that the Legislature and Senate of every American State bear to the head authority of the Congress in the capitol at Washington." All that relates to local business it
CANADIAN INTRODUCTION. ^3
was proposed to delegate to the Irish Assembly ; all questions of imperial policy were still to be left to the imperial government. It wais all in vain that the acknowledged Irish leader, Mr. Par- nell, declared in the closing debate that the Irish people were content to have a Parliament Wholly subordinate to the imperial Parliament ; that they did not expect a Parliament like Grattan's, which possessed co-ordinate powers. The words of some outraged exile in Amerka or Australia fur- nished a suffitient pretext for the ungenerous but characteristic vote that followed.
In this great struggle I am thoroughly in sym- pathy with my country. With the historian Lecky I believe that "the Home Rule theory is within the limits of the Consdtutioh and supported by means that are perfectly loyal and legitimate." The British Colonies have Secured it, and it is not too much to say that the bond of union be- tween the Colonies and the Empire depisnds on its existence. Canadian opposition to Home Rule would seem to show that the denial of the boon implies also the rejection of the Golden Rule.
That permanent peace will ever come to Ire- land without it no sane man expects. No foreign power can govern Ireland. The experiment has surely been tried long enough. The unconquer- able spirit possessed so fully by the larger island is no less developed in Ireland. The spirit of
14 CANADIAN INTRODUCTION.
the age only strengthens the spirit of indepen- dence, while the millions of her children on this side the Atlantic tell her that Home Rule is the only reasonable rule for freemen.
Ireland needs rest. For a long tiiae she has been under terrible provocation, and has suffered as no other country in Europe. She looks around for sympathy, and i!; is not wanting. But what she needs most is equitable, yea, generous treatment at the hands of England. These pages will show that her poverty is largely the result of misgovernment. England needs the tranquillity of Ireland as much as Ireland herself does. Let Ireland be assured that her rights are to be sacredly respected ; that her wrongs are to be redressed by England, not grudgingly nor of necessity; that the elevation and comfort of her down-trodden children is to be considered a more pressing subject of legislation than the claims of an independent and irresponsible no- bility. She has given her Burkes, her Welling- tons, her Ekifferins and her Tyndalls to enrich the Empire. Let her be told to call her children to the development of her own resources and the improvement of her own polity. Order will then soon come from chaos, and light from her sadly prolonged darkness, and the days of her mourningr will soon be ended.
Thoroughly satisfied that a generous policy on the part of England, not merely permitting, but
CANADIAN INTRODUCTION. jg
encouraging Home Rule, would give to my country peace, prosperity, and enthusiastic loyalty, I take my place with those who plead for a sep- arate Parliament for Ireland, as Illinois, Ohio, and California have separate Parliaments, but still allied to the Imperial Parliament on the principle that binds Illinois, Ohio, and California to the United States of America. Less than that should not be accepted. More has not been asked by any of the leaders. sketched in this work.
I commend the work to the reader not because I can endorse every sentence that it contains, or approve of all the details of operation therem, for I have not studied carefully every page. But J heartily approve of the object aimed at, and believing that the present struggle is the old con- test of monopoly against the common weal, or, as it has been aptly put recendy, of "the classes against the masses," I promptly take my place with the latter, and claim for my countrymen a respectful hearing.
As In all past struggles for the enlargement of British liberties the terms "loyal" and "disloyal" have been called into active service, so It Is to-day, and " Unionists " and " Loyalists " are posing as the legitimate opponents of Home Rule. These pretensions and assumptions have been torn Into tatters a thousand times, and are as meaningless when so used as the terms "orthodox" and "heterodox" among speculative theologians.
18 CANADIAN INTRODUCTION.
And as we scan the ranks of the men who on either side of the Atlantic are the self-constituted representatives of loyalty, and monopolize the term, we instinctively ask Risum tejieafis ? Some, I adrhit, may honestly see in Home Rule the dis- memberment of the Empire and innumerable Other evils. But I am firmly convinced that there are a thousand thousand good hearts and true, who, like myself, see in Home Rule and its con- comitant legislation not merely harmony and prosperity to Ireland, but an immeasurably brighter future and a more permanent stability to the British Empire.
A. BcfR}^
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
Charks Stewart Parnell — His character for grip and grit — His talents — His appearance — His early life and education — His ancestry^ Admiral Charles Stewart — Pamell's first tour in America — The Manchester Martyrs — Pamell's entrance into political life — Isaac Butt and the earlier movements for Home Rule — Parnell and Butt — Joseph Gillis Biggar — Enormous salaries paid to ofificials in Ireland — The policy of obstruction — Pamell's first speech in the House of Commons 25
CHAPTER II.
The era of obstruction — The British House of Commons — Queen's speech — The vote on supplies — How obstruction helped Ire- land's cause — A happy hunting-ground — Flogging in the army- England's treatment of prisoners — The Mutiny Act — Making John Bull listen — The Transvaal bill — The Irish in England and, Scotland — The Famine of 1879 — A crisis in Ireland's history- Mr. Butt's defects as a leader — Michael Davitt — The story of his early years — A Fenian movement — Davitt in prison — A ticket- of-leave — Irish-American organizations — Land League — " The Three F's" 78
CHAPTER IIL
The land war — The struggle of seven centuries — Illustrations fron^ Irish history — Coin and livery — The wars under the Tudor dy- nasty— Feudal tenure — The Munster undertakers — The settle- ment of Ulster — The Commission of Inquiry — The perfidy of the Stuarts — Cromwell in Ireland — William III., Sarsfield, Limer- ick, and the Penal Code . « 120
17
18 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER IV.
{Tie destruction of Irish industries — An alien proprietary — English legislation for many years directed against Ireland's prosperity — Interference with Irish trade — The depopulation of the land — Woollen manufactures crushed out — Blow after blow dealt at nascent industries — Lord Dufferin on English jealousy of Ireland — Rack-renting, eviction and legalized robbery — Cruelties of the landlords — Dean Swift's pictures of Ireland in the eighteenth century — Beggary and starvation 159
CHAPTER V.
The story of Irish Parliament — Poyning's law — Molyneux's " Case of Ireland Stated " — Wood's Half-Pence — The condition ot* Catholics — The corruptions of the Anglo-Irish Parliament — The Irish Volunteers — The convention at Dungarvan — Grattan's Declaration of Rights — An independent Irish Parliament — Its happy effect on Irish industries and on business in general — Lord Fitzwiliiam recalled — Tiie rebellion of 1798 — Castlereagh — How the Union was brought about . . . . '177
CHAPTER VL
After the Union — Ireland heavily taxed for England's benefit — Shameful injustice — The degradation of the tenantry — Absentee- ism— Wliolesale eviction — Coercion acts — Woise and worse — Wrong, poverty and hopeless misery — Catholic Emancipation — O'Connell the Liberator — The attitude of the Orange Tory party — O'Connell in Parliament 226
CHAPTER VII.
The great famine of 1845— Only 'he culmination of evils — The pota- to-rot— The great stiuggle in England regarding the Corn-Laws — Protection versus Free Trade — Peel and repeal — Lord John Russell — His criminally stupid Irish policy and its bitter conse- quences— Tenant right the only remedy for Ireland's woes — Co- ercion as a cure for fnmine — The awful disasters of 1845 ^"^^ 1847 — Foolish doctrinaire policy of Russell — The Labor Rate act — The Fever — The Soup Kitchen act — Emigration — Death of O'Connell — Young Ireland — John Mitchel and Smith O'Brien ■ — Great Britain the unchecked mistress of Ireland . . . 254
CONTENTS. 19
CHAPTER VIII.
Resurrection— The Fenian movement— Gladstone's mental and moral characteristics— The disestablishment of the Irish Church— The Land Bill of 1870, and its fatal defects— The Home Rule movement oiiginally started by Protestants— The Home Rule Association-A complete change of policy— No favors to be asked or accepted from either great English party . . .289
CHAPTER IX.
The old fight again-The crisis of 1879-The election of Mr. Par- nell as chairman of the Irish parly- Defects of Mr. Shaw as a polilical leader— The leaders decide to remain in opposition to both English parties— Mr. Shaw's friends sell themselves for place and pay— The hopeless differences between the Irish party and the English Liberals— Parnell's platform for settling the Irish land problem— English incapacity to deal with Irish ques- tions—The Di-sturbance Bill— Forster— Irish outrages— Irish members suspended and ordered to leave the House— Land Bill of 1881— No-Rent cry S°^
CHAPTER X.
In the depths— Merciless war between the Irish people and the au- thorities—Forster and Clifford Lloyd— « Harvey Duff"— Par- nell imppisoned— Parnell triumphant— The Phoenix Park mur- ders—Conservative rule and its benefits— Gladstone's new move- ment for conceding Home Rule— The situation in January, 1886
345
CHAPTER XI.
The great Home Rule debate of 1886— Gladstone, the Grand Old Man— His appearance— His qualities of mind and heart— John Morley— Joseph Chamberlain— Mr. Goschen—Haitiugton— Sal- isbury—Churchill— Justin McCarthy— Thomas Sexton— Arthur O'Connor— Timothy Daniel Sullivan— James O' Kelly— His sin- gular and checkered career as soldier, journalist, politician and parliamentarian— John Dillon— Edmund Leamy— E. D. Gray— T. M. Healy— William O'Brien— J. E. Redmond— T. Harring- ton—The Liberal Parliament of 1886— Gladstone's grand speech — The debate — Hope again deferred 3"^
20 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XII.
The appeal to the country-r-Gladstone's popuIa,rity with the mE^sses— ■, His brilliant campaign in Scotland— Splendid receptions at M^Hr Chester, Liverpool, and elsewhere — Anti-Giadstonian efforts of Hartington, Chamberlain, Goschen, Churchill, Trevelyan qi?,d Bright — The Primrose League — The attitude of the agricultural laborer and the farmer — -The democracy almost unanimously friendly to Ireland — The result of the midsummer elections of 1886 — Ireland not crushed — The revival of hope — Belfast riots —The outlook to-day 445
CHAPTER XIII.
THE MOVEMENT IN AMERICA.
American Introduction 457
Parnell's Appeal to America — Founding of the Irish National League of the United States — The Buffalo Convention — The " No-Rent Manifesto" — The Chicago Convention — The League's Second National Gathering — Gloomy days for the League — End of the Land League of America — Birth and growth of the Irish Na- tional League of America — Hon. Alexander Sullivan's admin- istration— The emigration question — Irish-American leaders — Patrick Egan takes the reins — Dark days again dawn for the League— Public utterances of eminent Americans — To strengthen Gladstone's hands— Third Annual Convention of the National League — The League under John Fitzgerald's administration . 471
CHAPTER XIV.
HISTORY OF AN IDEA,
"Why I became a Home Ruler," by Hon. W. E. Gladstone . . 823 CHAPTER XV.
JOHN SHERMAN S VIEWS.
Hon. John Sherman, U. S. Senator for Ohio, on '^ The Great Irish
Struggle" 843
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
pAca
RT. HON. W. E. GLADSTONE {Steet) Frontisptec*
THOMAS POWER O'CONNOR 7
A. BURNS, D. D., LL. D 8
CHARLES STEWART PARNELL {Steel) 24
ISAAC BUTT —J. G. BIGGAR 53
JOSEPH CHAMBERLAIN— T. BRENNAN 54
DR. K. O'DOHERTY ,, 71
J. WINTER 72
LORD SPENCER — MR. TREVELYAN 83
LORD R. CHURCHILL— LORD HARTINGTON 84
MICHAEL DAVITT 97
MEETING OF LAND LEAGUE COMMITTEE 98
F. B. FREEHILL 105
W. REDMOND — J. E. REDMOND 106
SCENE IN IRELAND — FARMER'S CABIN in
EVICTED — DRIVEN FROM THE HOUSE WE BUILT 112
CELEBRATING MASS IN A CABIN 155
LIFE IN IRELAND 156
DESTITUTE FISHERMEN 173
EVICTED — HOMELESS 174
HENRY GRATTAN 189
GRATTAN'S PARLIAMENT 190
DANIEL O'CONNELL 249
DRINKING HIS HONOR'S HEALTH 250
THE OBNOXIOUS PROCESS-SERVER 293
NO RENT 294
T. M. HEALY — JUSTIN McCARTHY 313
THOMAS SEXTON — W. H. O'SULLIVAN 314
M. McDonald, of victoria 321
JOHN MORLEY — sir W. V. HARCOURT 322
21
22 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
rAGE A. M. SULLIVAN — T. D. SULLIVAN „ 333
GLADSTONE'S SPEECH 334
PARNELL'S NEW NATIONAL MAP 442
ROBERT M. McWADE 469
PATRICK A. COLLINS — THOMAS FLATLEY 470
PATRICK EGAN — ALEXANDER SULLIVAN 475
JAMES MOONEY — JOHN J. HYNES , 476
REV. PATRICK CRONIN — JOHN F. FINERTY 509
REV. CHARLES O'REILLY, D. D. — REV. THOMAS J. CONATY 510
WILLIAM J. GLEASON — HON. M. V. GANNON 54s
REV. DR. GEO. C. BETTS — REV. P. A. McKENNA 546
COL. JOHN F. ARMSTRONG — PATRICK MARTIN ., '. 603
MICHAEL J. REDDING— MILES M. O'BRIEN 604
JAMES REYNOLDS — JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY 613
COL. W. P. REND — JOHN GROVES 614
ROGER WALSH— JUDGE MICHAEL COONEY....... 651
JOHN FITZGERALD — JOHN P.SUTTON 652
REV. GEO. W. PEP^'ER — THOMAS H. WALSH 759
M. J. RYAN — E. JOHNSON 760
MAURICE F. WILHERE — HUGH McCAFFREY , 819
REV. MAURICE J. DORNEY — M. D. GALLAGHER ta)
tn.y ai, J=;
CHAPTER I.
CHARLES STEWART PARNELL.
GRIP and grit: in these two words are told the secret of Mr. Parnell's marvellous success and marvellous hold over men. When once he has made up his mind to a thing he is inflexible ; immovable by affection or fear or reasoning. He knows what he wants, and he is resolved to have it. Throug-hout his career he has often had to make bargains ; he has never yet been known to make one in which he gave up a sinorle iota which he could hold. But it takes time before one discovers these qualities. In ordinary circumstances Mr. Parnell is apparently the most easy-going of men. Though he is not emotional or effusive, he is genial and unaffected to a degree ; listens to all comers with an air of real deference, especially if they be good talkers ; and Apparently allows himself to follow implicitly the guidance of those who are speaking to him. He is for this reason one of the most agreeable of companions, never raising any difficulties about trifles, ready to subject his will and his conven- ience to that of others ; amiable, unpretending, a
(25)
26 GLADSTONE— PARNELL.
splendid listener, a delightful host. But all the softness and the pliancy disappear when the moment comes for decisive action. After days of apparent wavering, he suddenly becomes granite. His decision is taken, and once taken is irrevocable. He oroes ri^ht on to the end, whatever it may be. In some respects, indeed, he bears a singular resemblance to General Grant; he has his council of war, and nobody could be a more patient or more respectful lis- tener, and, ordinarily, nobody more ready to have his thinking done for him by others. But when affairs reach a great climax, it is his own judg- ment upon which he acts, and upon that alone.
Mr. Parnell has not a large gift of expression. He hates public speaking, and avoids a crowd with a nervousness that sometimes appears almost feminine. He likes to steal through crowded streets in a long, heavy Ulster and a small smoking-cap that effectually conceal his identity, and when he is in Ireland is only happy when the quietness of Avondale secludes him from all eyes but those of a few intimates. From his want of any love of expressing himself, it often happens that he leaves a poor impression on those who meet him casually. More than one man has thought that he was litde better than a simpleton, and their mangled reputations strew the path over which the Juggernaut of Parnell's fortunes and genius has mercilessly passed. He is incapable
THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 27
of giving the secret of his power, or of explaining the reasons of his decisions. He judges wisely, with instinctive wisdom, just as Millais paints ; he is always politically right, because, so to speak, he cannot help it. This want of any great power and any great desire to expose the line of reason- ing by which he has reached his conclusions has often exposed Parnell to misunderstandings and strong differences of opinion even with those who respect and admire him. The invariable result is that, when time has passed, those who have dif- fered from him admit that they were wrong and he rio-ht, and once more have a fatalistic belief in his sagacity. Often he does not speak for days to any of his friends, and is seldom even seen by them. He knows the enormous advantage some- times of pulling wires from an invisible point. During this absence his friends occasionally fret and fume and wonder whether he knows every- thing that is going on ; and, when their impatience has reached its climax, Parnell appears, and lo ! a great combination has been successfully laid, and the Irish are within the citadel of some time- honored and apparently immortal wrong. Simi- larly it is with Parnell's nerve. In ordinary times he occasionally appears nervous and fretful and pessimistic; in the hour of crisis he is calm, gay, certain of victory, with the fanaticism of a Mussul- man, unconscious of danger, with a blindness half boyish, half divine.
28 GLADSTONE— PARNELL.
Mr. Parnell is not a man of large literary reading, but he is a severe and constant student of scientific subjects, and is especially devoted to mechanics. It is one of his amusements to isolate himself from the enthusiastic crowds that meet him everywhere in Ireland, and, in a room by himself, to find delight in mathematical books. He is a constant reader of engineering and other mechanical papers, and he takes the keenest in- terest in machinery. It is characteristic of the modesty and, at the same time, scornfulness of his nature, that all through the many attacks made upon him by gentlemen who wear their hearts upon their sleeves, he has never once made allusion to his own strong love of animals ; but to his friends he often expressed his disgust for the outrages that, during a portion of the agitation in Ireland, were occasionally committed upon them. He did not express these sentiments in public, for the good reason that he regarded the outcry raised by some of the Radicals as part of the gospel of cant for which that section of the Liberal party is especially distinguished. To hear a man like Mr. Forster refusing a word of sympathy, in one breath, for whole housefuls of human beings turned out by a felonious landlord to die by the roadside, and, in the next, demanding the suppression of the liberties of a nation be- cause half-a-dozen of cattle had their tails cut off; to see the same men who howled in delight be-
THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 29
cause the apostle of a great, humane movement, like Mr. Davitt, had been sent to the horrors of penal servitude, shuddering over the ill-usage of a horse, was quite enough to make even the most humane man regard this professed love of an- imals as but another item in the grand total of their hypocrisy. Mr. Parnell regards the lives of human beings as more sacred than even those of animals, and he is consistent in his hatred of op- pression and cruelty wherever they may be found. His sympathies are with the fights of freedom everywhere, and he often spoke in the strongest terms of his disgust for the butcheries in the Soudan, which the Liberals, who wept over Irish horses, and Irish cows, received with such Olym- pian calm. In 1867 the ideas that had been sown in his mind in childhood first beofan to mature. His mother was then, as probably throughout her life, a strong Nationalist, and so was at least one of his sisters. Thus Mr. Parnell, in entering upon political life, was reaching the natural sequel of his own descent, of his early training, of the strongest tendencies of his own nature. It is not easy to describe the mental life of a man who is neither expansive nor introspective. It is one of the strongest and most curious peculiarities of Mr. Parnell, not merely that he rarely, if ever, speaks of himself, but that he rarely, if ever, gives any indication of having studied himself. His mind, if one may use the jargon of the
30 GLADSTONE— PARNELL.
Germans, is purely objective. There are few men who, after a certain length of acquaintance, do not familiarize you with the state of their hearts or their stomachs or their finances ; with their fears, their hopes, their aims. But no man has ever been a confidant of Mr. Parnell. Any allusion to himself by another, either in the exu- berance of friendship or the design of flattery, is passed by unheeded ; and it is a joke among his intimates that to Mr. Parnell the being Parnell does not exist.
It is plain from the facts we have narrated that Parnell's great strength is one which lies in his character rather than in his attainments. Yet his wonderful successes won in the face of nu- merous and most bitter opponents testify to mental abilities of a very high order. Mr. Glad- stone has said of him, " No man, as far as I can judge, is more successful than the hon. member in doing that which it is commonly supposed that all speakers do, but which in my opinion few really do — and I do not include myself among those few — namely, in saying what he means to say." Mr. Parnell is moreover very strong in not saying the thing which should not be said. Too many of his countrymen, it may be safely as- serted, are of that hasty and impulsive tem- perament which may betray, by a word prema- turely spoken, some point which should have been held from the enemy, and which might easily
THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. gj
have been made, at some later time, a strono^hold
t>
of defence in the parliamentary contest. Mr. Parnell has few qualities which have hitherto been associated with the idea of a successful Irish leader. He has now become one of the most potent of parliamentary debaters in the House of Commons, through his thorough grasp of his own ideas and through his exact knowledge of the needs of his country. But Mr. Parnell has be- come this in spite of himself He retains to this day, as we have before stated, an almost invin- cible repugnance to public speaking; if he can, through any excuse, be silent, he remains silent, and the want of all trainino- before his entrance into political life made him, at first, a speaker more than usually stumbling. His complete suc- cess in overcoming, not indeed his natural ob- jection to public speaking, but the difficulty with which his first speeches were marked, affords one of the many proofs of his wonderful strength and singleness of purpose. It is not a little re- markable that his first successful speech was crit- icised for its vehemence and bitterness of tone, and for the shrillness and excessive effort of the speaker's voice. It seems probable that the embarrassing circumstances of his position while addressing an unsympathizing body of legislators, combined with a sense of his own inexperience, may have produced the appearance of excessive vehemence of manner.
32 GLADSTONE4-PARNELL.
Nature has stamped on the person of this re- markable man the qualities of his mind and tem- perament. His face is singularly handsome, and at a first glance might even appear too delicate to be strong. The nose is long and thin and carved, not moulded ; the mouth is well cut ; the cheeks are pallid; the forehead perfectly round, as round and as striking as the forehead of the first Napoleon ; and the eyes are dark and un- fathomable. The passer-by in the streets, taking a casual look at those beautifully chiselled features and at the air of perfect tranquillity, would be inclined to think that Mr. Parnell was a very handsome young man, who probably had graduated at West Point, and would in due time die in a skirmish with the Indians. But a closer look would show the great possibilities beneath this face. The mouth, especially the under lip, speaks of a grip that never loosens ; the eye, when it is fixed, tells of the inflexible will be- neath ; and the tranquillity of the expression is the tranquillity of the nature that wills and wins. Similarly with his figure. It looks slight almost to frailty ; but a glance will show that the bones are large, the hips broad, and the walk firm ; in fact, Mr. Parnell tramps the ground rather than walks. The hands are firm, and even the way they grasp a pencil has a significance.
This picture of Parnell is very unlike the por- traits which have been formed of him by the
THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. ■- 33
imagination of those who have never met him. When he was first in the storm and stress of the era of obstruction, he used to be portrayed in the truthful pages of English comic journalism with a battered hat, a long upper lip, a shillelah in his hand, a clay pipe in his caubeen. Even to this day portraits after this fashion appear in the lower-class journals that think the caricature of the Irish face the best of all possible jokes. Par- nell is passionately fond of Ireland; is happier and healthier on its soil than in any other part of the world, and is almost bigoted in the intensity of his patriotism. But he might easily be taken for a native of another country. Residence for the first years of his life in English schools has given him a strong English accent and an essen- tially EngHsh manner; and from his American mother he has got, in all probability, the healthy pallor, the delicate chiselling, the impassive look, and the resolute eye that are typical of the chil- dren of the great Republic.
Such is the man in brief who to-day is perhaps the most potent personality in all the many na- tions and many races of the earth. The Russian Czar rules wider domains and more subjects ; but his sway has to be backed by more than a million armed men, and he passes much of his time shiv- ering before the prospect of a sudden and awful death at the hands of the infuriated amono- his own people. The German is a more multitudi-
34 GLADSTONE— PARNELL.
nous race than the Irish and almost as widely scattered ; but Bisrnarck requires also the protec- tion of a mighty army and of cruel coercion laws, and the German who leaves the Fatherland re- gards with abhorrence the political ideas with which Bismarck is proud to associate his name. Gladstone exercises an almost unparalleled sway over the minds, hearts, imaginations of English- men; but nearly one-half of his people regard him as the incarnation of all evil ; and shallow- pated lieutenants, great only in self-conceit, dare to beard and defy and flout him. But Parnell has not one solitary soldier at his command ; the jail has opened for him and not for his enemies, and except for a miserable minority he is adored by all the Irish at home, and adored even more fer- vently by the Irish who will never see — in some cases who have never seen — the shores of the Green Isle again. In one way or another, through intermixture with the blood of other peoples, the Irish race can lay claim to some twenty millions of the human race. Out of all these twenty millions the people who do not re- gard Parnell as their leader may be counted by the few hundreds of thousands. In cities sepa- rated from his home or place of nativity by oceans and continents, men meet at his command, and spill their money for the cause he recommends. Meetings called under his auspices gather daily in every one of the vast States of America, in
THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 35
Canada, in Cape Colony; and the primeval woods of Australia have echoed to the cheers for his name. But this is but a superficial view of his power. A nation, under his guidance, has shed 'many of its traditional weaknesses; from being im- pulsive has grown cool and calculating ; from being disunited and discordant has welded itself into iron bands of discipline and solidarity. In a race scattered over every variety of clime and soil and gover'nment, and in every stratum of the social scale from the lowest to the highest, there are men of every variety of character and occupation and opinion. In other times the hatred of these men over their differences of method was more bitter than their hatred for the common enemy who loathed alike their ends and their means. Now they all alike sink into equality of agree- ment before the potent name of Parnell, high and low, timid and daring, moderate and extreme. Republics change their Presidents, colonies their governors and ministers ; in England now it is Gladstone and now it is Salisbury that rules; but Parnell remains stable and immovable, the apex of a pyramid that stretches invisible over many lands and seas, as resistless apparently as fate, solid as granite, durable as time.
It was many years before the world had any idea of this new and potent force that was coming into its councils and affairs. Charles Stewart Parnell was born in June, 1846. He is descended
36 GLADSTONE— PARNELL.
from a family that had long been associated with the political life of Ireland. The family came originally from Congleton, in Cheshire; but like so many others of English origin had in time proved its right to the proud boast of being Hibemior Hibernis ipsis. So far back as the beginning of the last century a Parnell sat for an Irish constituency in the Irish Parliament. At the time of the Union a Parnell held high office, and was one of those who gave the most substantial proof of the reality of his love for the independ- ence of his country. Sir John Parnell at the time was Chancellor of the Exchequer and had held the office for no less than seventeen years. It was one of the vices of the old Irish Parliament even in the days after Grattan had attained com- parative freedom in 1782 that the Ministers were creatures of the Crown and not responsible to and removable by the Parliament of which they were members. There was everything, then, in these years of service as a representative of the Crown to have transformed Sir John Parnell into a time- serving and corrupt courtier. But Sir John Bar- ington, the best known chronicler of the days of the Irish Union, describes Sir John Parnell in his list of contemporary Irishmen as " Incorruptible;" and " Incorruptible " he proved ; for he resigned office and resisted the Act of Union to the bitter end. A son of Sir John Parnell — Henry Parnell — -was afterwards for many years a prominent
THE GREAT IRISH STRUGGLE. 37
member of the British Parliament, became a Cab- inet Minister, and was ultimately raised to the Peerage as the first Baron Congleton. John Henry Parnell was a grandson of Sir John ParnelL In his younger days he went on a tour through America ; there met Miss Stewart, the daughter of Commodore Stewart, fell in love with her, and was married in Broadway. It is unnecessary to speak to Americans of the immortal " Old Iron- sides." Suffice it to say that the bravery, calm- ness, and strength of will which were characteris- tic of the brave commander of the " Consdtution " are inherited by his grandson, the bearer of his name ; for the full name of Mr. Parnell, as is known, is " Charles Stewart Parnell." There was also somethinor significant in the fact that the man who was destined to prove the most potent foe oi^ British misrule in Ireland should have drawn his blood on the mother's side from a captain who was one of the few men that ever brought humili- ation on the proud mistress of the seas.
The young Parnell, chiefly because he was a delicate child, was sent to various schools in England during his boyhood, and finally went to Cambridge University — the universit)^ of his father. Here he stayed for a